Apollo's Big Dirty Secret Exposed 11 comments
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Needless to say our country is in a mess. We have allowed greed to blur the lines between right and wrong and the result is the headlines that we are forced to read daily. Unfortunately, this greed is not limited to banks and brokerage firms, but its reaches have extended to the sacred institution of education. This year alone almost 600,000 education jobs are at risk because of state budget cuts. Yet, the University of Phoenix (APOL) continues to roll on as the #1 largest recipient of Government guaranteed student loans in the country. When you see how they operate their business you will be appalled.
Citron believes there are many headwinds facing the company including:
- Increasing Cohort Default Rate for loans
- Price Competition in the industry
- Looming restrictions on student loans
This report will focus solely on Apollo’s unsavory business practices and the tactics they use to deceive the government and their own customers.
All of the referenced documents in this report have just been made available in the public record within the past 5 weeks.
Before we go any further, let us put one thing in perspective:
The state of Arizona has already announced that they are cutting more than $133 million from public K-12 education for the coming year 2009. That is less money than the insiders of Apollo have reaped from stock sales in the past 8 weeks alone!
Qui Tam
The ongoing Qui Tam lawsuit against Apollo has released some astounding documents over the past month. All investors must understand that it is ILLEGAL for “for profit” education companies to financially incentivize enrollment counselors for performance. This is the heart of the qui tam suit and challenges a practice that, if eliminated, could topple Apollo’s entire business model. While this case has been grinding ahead for quite some time, these pieces of evidence were recently submitted into the court record. They show UOP engaging in intentional and systematic deception of the government about its compensation scheme for enrollment recruiters.
As documented in the suit, earlier in the decade Apollo embarked on a path of becoming more of a marketing company than an educational institution. Since the year 2000, Apollo has seen their enrollment increase in size by 200%, the faculty increase 100%, during which time the ranks of its enrollment counselors swelled by a staggering 1000%.
Expressed another way, the student to faculty ratio went up from 9:1 to 15:1 while the number of enrollment counselors per student ratio nearly tripled from 166:1 to 69:1.
Nice Case Summary (PDF) [ See page 48 ]
And just to address skeptics who think we have cherry picked a few docs from the case, it should be noted that Plaintiffs have submitted over 25,000 documents in hard copy, and thousands more in electronic form that document their claim of performance-based compensation for enrollment counselors at UOP.
Confidential Memo!!
Below is a compensation table in which the exact number of enrollments generated by an employee is correlated to a specific salary level, pay cut, and/or cash award and/or time off. The company has marked it “Confidential” — until now, that is.
Deceiving the US Dept of Education
Below is a set of internal emails in which supervisors are specifically coached by senior staff to refrain from referring to “starts” or “enrollments” in written performance reviews of enrollment counselors, although it is obvious that that is the main evaluation criterion. Supervisors are coached specifically to rewrite page 1 of their reviews because “The Department of Education audits these reviews”.
Exhibit G (PDF)
Trying to Fly Under the Radar
The testimony of a former employee, who testifies that a company official (Director of Enrollment Dustin Phillips) stated that the “performance matrix” (compensation schedule for EC’s) was constantly being reformulated as part of a “smoke and mirrors” effort intended so that Apollo could “fly under the radar” with regard to Department of Education audits and prohibitions on incentive compensation.
Exhibit K (PDF)
The Company Admits Wrongdoing
And lest you think this evidence is just little bits of exception and trivia culled by disgruntled employees, look at the jaw-droppingly explicit admissions from former President Brian Mueller and his crew at an analyst group meeting in 2006, now excerpted as a trial exhibit: (Mr. Mueller abruptly resigned this year with no explanation after spending 20 years at Apollo.)
Counselor compensation is one of the biggest advantages our company has had over the years. It is our ability to incent enrollment counselors for their performances.
We’ve got 3,800 sales people…that we are able to drive specific performance levels that we have not been able to drive in the past
Apollo Admission in Analyst Day Presentation (PDF)
To which Citron comments: “Sales people? He really said that?”
While we do not believe at this point that APOL will get put out of business by the Federal Government, we do believe there is an inherent risk to their franchise, especially with an administration that has promised to focus on accountability.
Apollo’s application for re-certification under Title IV has now been on month-to-month status for the last 19 months… we can see why.
What is chilling to Citron is the amount of insider selling of Apollo stock over the past 3 years (in the hundreds of millions), during which time they delay the inevitable court date while claiming that they do not pay their enrollment counselors incentive compensation for performance.
Glengarry Glen Ross - Phoenix Style
The boiler room mentality was revealed on the same analyst day quoted above when former President Brian Mueller stated:
We call them six times a day for four days, 24 times in the first four days. We don’t leave messages; we want a live voice. When we get a live voice, then we want to transfer that prospective student to an enrollment counselor who’s best able to convert that student.
Just to prove that these tactics are not a thing of the past we refer to yet another lawsuit that was re-filed in January of 2009. Filed by a former employee, Chad McKinney, the lawsuit portrays an unmistakable boiler room work environment. The former employee in this lawsuit stated he was harassed because he would not commit unlawful acts in recruiting students. The suit confirms that his salary was based on enrollment goals.
If I met a “goal”, which in essence was a quota of 4 new students per month, I was not to be reprimanded. If I did better on the quota I was told I would get a 20% increase in salary after 6 months.
Without even discussing the merits of the case, it is the attachments that corroborate everything Citron has discovered about Apollo.
Blitzes
According to the lawsuit, blitzes are designated times (by the manager), three times a day, during which enrollment counselors were expected to not leave their cubicles, even to go to the bathroom, and to make as many telephone dials as possible, and schedule as many student appointments as possible. To show how “boiler room” this whole thing is, just look at this email from Carlyn Lindsten, associate director of enrollment. No editorial comment is necessary once you read them. The Blitz (PDF)
Trick Messages
Another popular tactic of Apollo Group is to use trick messages to get leads to return phone calls. Below is an email from Barbara Keramati and Marive Wright, enrollment managers, instructing their sales force on how to trick prospects into returning phone calls:
Only Starts Count
The most damning email came from an enrollment manager who tells their staff the true spirit of their recruitment effort:
Remember, students have to attend three nights or post three weeks in order to get START credit, which is what counts in the end.
It is not surprising that this type of recruitment pressure has led to a graduation rate of 4% according International Center for Education Statistics, an organization within the Department of Education. Now true, this number only includes those students who have never enrolled in college previously. However, we cannot explain how bad this is without making a comparison. Just look at Arizona State (same state) which has a graduation rate of 56%. [ Click on “Graduation and Retention Rate” within link, above. ]
Welcome Mr. Arne Duncan
In the midst of the government discussing a new era of oversight that is as far-reaching as salary limits for White House personnel as well as proposed salary limits on government-assisted financial institutions, we welcome a new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. Mr. Duncan, a known reformer, has promised to reform education in the United States. In a CNN interview given just two days ago he makes these comments regarding the proposed $150 billion education stimulus package:
Yeah, we’re going to have to keep very close track of the money, and we’re going to have to implement this impeccably. And it’s very important, as you said, that the money goes where it’s needed.
So how will Mr. Duncan assess the value of $2.5 billion of Government guaranteed student loans being funneled through Apollo’s enrollment/recruitment boiler room sales operation next year, only to result in hundreds of millions of dollars flowing straight to company insiders as they cash out their stock?
Aren’t there more effective ways to shore up the country’s secondary education institutions than this?
Conclusion
So let’s get this straight. The largest recipient of student loans in the country is a for-profit school who uses trick phone calls and boiler room tactics to get students enrolled. They admittedly pay incentive compensation to their army of enrollment counselors, a practice which could easily jeopardize 75% of their revenue. The school has one of the lowest graduation rates in the country …and yet the business model exists only because of US Government loan guarantees.
And we are supposed to believe that this house of cards is invulnerable to education reform? And further, investors should march to the analysts’ drumbeat that their business is going to grow enough to justify the lofty multiple of a growth stock, as they marshal the public’s money into the face of wave after wave of insider stock sales?
Cautious investing to all.
Disclosure: Author is short APOL
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This article has 11 comments:
Let's see, you are short on Apollo and then you write an article that damns them for everything they do. Oh, I guess you can conveniently ignore the THOUSANDS of college graduates they turn out every year, who now have greater job opportunities and a better chance to participate in the American dream. Yeah, that doesn't count, not when you have a chance to sling mud so the stock price drops and YOU PROFIT!!!!
I hope you aren't some kind of Apollo insider or stock broker, because trying to influence the price of a stock that you have invested in is ILLEGAL!!!! YOU PUTZ!!!!!!
Since the management know the company is for profit, those who want to attend the program majorly comes from 1: company remittance; 2 government student loan;
The enrolled students usually find a certificate from online school is passable to land a job.
Now with such high rating of employment, even those who has skill set are fired. Those still in the program will find it even harder to get a job (the hiring company often like newbie for less pay in normal cases, but now they don't even need to worry about the pay scale.
Whats astonishing to me is that Seeking Alpha would even publish this guy considering he displays no journalistic integrity and obviously has an axe to grind and a motive to profit from (admitted as being short Apollo). I won't be reading any more trash that Alpha puts out cause its quite clear to me that "you scratch my back, I'll scratch your back behind the scenes crap is going on here with Citron, Apha and this "writer".
If most of the 401 k exists because there is a loop hole in the tax code, I don't criticized Apollo's propaganda and the way they take advantage of the student loan issue.
Well, at this moment, the market seems can't take the any negative info. The whole block of "education" stcok loses its grip.
Get real! Slow newsday or something? O how horrible! Bad, Apollo, Baaaad! How dare a for-profit organization incentivize and pay its people for marketing! And for something as awful as education to help them achieve higher, improve their lives and get their kids in better schools and on safer streets!
Look out everybody! What's next? Non-profit schools doing fund-raising to get more money for better programs or facilities? (GASP!) O! Is there no end to the greed!
O, and those "damning" 9-year old emails advising someone to watch their language to avoid incorrect terminology to minimize legal risk in this suit-happy world. The nerve!
Hey, if you need a scandal to report why not publish what's going on in your head and heart in terms of motives. University of Phoenix has changed more lives than you could ever hope to screw up with your lies!
Here in IT department, we take our job seriously to help the busy working adults get the most of their education at UOP. Student retention is number one in our list of goals. We always ask ourselves, what tool or feature can we build to encourage students to stay...what can we do to help them better connect with their classmates and instructors even after finishing the class or earning the degree...what can we do to help them network their skills and education they have earned from UOP. We retain all their user accounts so that anytime they can log on and still take advantage of our online facilities, such as e-books, online library, free workshops, etc.
UOP is a for-profit university. I would expect them to train their EC to produce and not be passive at their job. There is personal satisfaction is hitting a goal. So who cares if they have a Blitz day? I think it is just injecting some fun to the otherwise boring job. Who cares if they have to leave trick messages to get a callback? The prospective student could always hang up. Last time I check this is still a free country.
So now I work here, and I try to make this difference in other student's lives, like that difference was made in mine, because my Enrollment Counselor DID call me until I was ready to commit, because they NEVER gave up on me, and they WERE always there. These 'documents' you do not represent the hundreds of caring, life-changing, people who work here and devote their time to making sure students not only start school, but stay in school through the rough times, and graduate proudly. The 650-odd students who graduated in Jacksonville alone last December make your figures seem less than plausible.